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Re: Small vs Larger Bees

Me or Sol?

If me, I don't know where they got it from. However, she does say right below the map "Cell sizes are recorded in general for zones, and where altitude and higher latitude occur, use Humbolt’s Law for deviations", so that's allowing some leeway.

She also says "Special Note: After studying correlations, we believe brood 4.9 mm cell size could be the upper limit for cell size control for mites worldwide".
Interesting comment. That means according to her, my 5.00 mm comb won't work.

Re: Small vs Larger Bees

They are coming out of the winter the hive is not as strong as the others but it didn't go into the winter very strong either. It literally got down to a fistful of bees at one point. However it's a mostly carni queen and just started showing that explosive carni spring buildup in the last few weeks, it wintered in one box but has now filled it & beginning a second box added.
Did a drone brood sample of maybe 100 or so larvae just a few days ago, couldn't find any varroa.

I recently contacted the guys that made the sc foundation, they have around 80 sheets left and no plans to make any more. So I bought all of it. Once the bees are ready I'll split the hive into 5, which will end up with 2 brood boxes each, and due to lack of foundation, will have to do natural cell for the honey boxes. Don't want to use normal foundation for the honey boxes because I don't want any chemical contamination. The sc foundation I bought was organic.

They will be in their own yard with no other hives, and we'll see what happens.